THE ARRIVAL was low-key. Relaxed bishops sauntering down the cobbled street towards the Cathedral, and official stewards and good-natured police far outnumbering the handful of mild-mannered, almost self-deprecating protesters.

“Woe to you who are at ease with Lambeth — Amos 6.1” was the most penetrable, if not from any recognisable version of the Bible. There was a solo murmur about the fruits of historic disobedience, and some rather unfathomable warnings about unclean birds of revelation having their nests underthe bishops’ garments, and men who didn’t expose deeds of darkness carrying them under their own jackets. But no voices were raised.

In a break with tradition, the bishops did not process, Olympic-style behind their provincial standards; nor did they wear copes and mitres. They walked in pairs, in convocation dress, deliberately “undifferentiated” so as to reflect a desire born out of their three-day retreat to be “less triumphal than some might expect Anglicans to be, or had been in the past,” the Primate of Australia, the Most Revd Phillip Aspinall, explained afterwards. The only group separated out were the Primates.

It was intended to be less formal and more accessible — and also hid gaps in the provincial representation. There was a ripple of interest among the press when the Bishop of Durham appeared wearing his cassock: was it some kind of protest? No, his robes had been mislaid somewhere on the campus of the University of Kent.

Brass and organ thundered out the fanfare and the opening hymn, ‘We sing a love that sets all people free’, to the tune of Woodlands. It heralded an all-encompassing and magnificently cosmopolitan service, with the prayers of penitence in Swahili, African rhythms for a syncopated Gloria, and the Epistle from Romans 8 read by a Korean nun in her own language.

Then came the outbreak of sheer joy that was the Gospel procession of grass-skirted Melanesian Brothers and Sisters. In scenes reminiscent of Dr Sentamu’s enthronement as Archbishop of York, they danced and weaved their exuberant way from the High Altar to the Compass Rose, to the accompaniment of pan pipes, drums, and the kazoo.

The Bishop of Colombo, the Right Revd Duleep de Chickera, was the preacher. Taking as his text, 2 Corinthians 12.9 — ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” — he spoke in a measured and quietly inspirational way of the realities that encompassed the worldwide Anglican Communion. One was the torn and divided world — “God gives the Church an agenda out of the crises of the world,” he suggested — and the Communion must always give the highest priority to transforming it.

He spoke soberly of the second reality. “We are a wounded Communion. Some of us are not here. That is an indication that all is not well,” he said. “Certainly the crisis is complex. It is not a crisis that can be resolved instantly. The journey ahead is a long and arduous one: a journey that will demand our prayers, our faithfulness, our mutual trust in each other and, of course, our trust in God who makes reconciliation possible.”

The Gospel reading had been the parable of the weeds sowed among the wheat. “The words of the master were wise. Let them grow together,” he emphasised, in a clear plea for unity. “There must be no uprooting, my dear brothers and sisters, simply because if we attempt this game, of uprooting the unrighteous, none of us will remain. . . The wisdom of these words suggests that we stay together. We grow from a common strain, a common tradition. . . The disciples of Jesus stay together and journey together.”

The Bishop made a plea for “the practice of self-scrutiny”, illustrated by the parable of the plank and the speck of dust. It was gentle chastisement and admonition. “Christ calls us to be hard on ourselves and Christ calls us to consider him only as our measure and our standard. . . The standard is always Christ. It’s not that bishop who’s giving you trouble. It’s not that archdeacon who whose theology always irritates. . . Self-scrutiny is possible in the Christian journey as we stand naked before Jesus the Christ.”

He spoke of the need to resuscitate Anglicanism, the challenge of unity in diversity, of humility in Christ. The Communion was called to be “an inclusive Communion where there is space equally for everyone and anyone, regardless of colour, gender, ability, sexual orientation. Unity in diversity is a cherished Anglican tradition: a spirituality, if you like, which we must recognise in all humility for the sake of Christ.”

Talk about reconciliation was incomplete unless the Communion was a prophetic voice which addressed and dealt with the injustice of the world, he said. The prophetic voice was the “voice of the voiceless, those who for political reasons, cultural reasons, economic reasons, military reasons cannot speak for themselves”. Whether there was a crisis in Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Afghanistan, or Iraq, “the voiceless must be given a voice through the leadership of the Anglican Communion.”

The prophetic tradition was, in a sense, monotonous and relentless, he reflected. He concluded: “As we move from this wonderful retreat through this beautiful eucharist into our conference, here is the crux of Anglican identity. We do not live for ourselves; and all our energies, all our gifts are directed toward abundant life for others.” Loud applause followed.

Then the Nicene Creed: it caused us to stumble, said as it was in its ancient form, without the phrase, “and the Son”. There was power and might and glory in the Missa Luba, a version of the Latin mass based on Congolese songs; the Lord’s Prayer was spoken in everyone’s own language; intercessions derived from the Scottish eucharist were led from the Compass Rose in Hindi, Portugese, Japanese and French.

They went out to “Oh for a thousand tongues to sing” — never more rousingly sung. The Archbishop of Australia, Dr Philip Aspinall, said it had been “an amazing experience to be in Canterbury Cathedral with all the bishops from around the Anglican world.” Just the acoustics, he said, “not to mention all the saints entombed around the walls. One does have a sense of being surrounded by a cloud of witnesses. It is really quite moving.”

SUNDAY: OUTLINE OF THE CONFERENCE

THIS CONFERENCE will be markedly different in style and approach, and bears the distinct and reconciling stamp of the Archbishop of Canterbury. It is a genuine attempt to address the complaints that have always attached to international Anglican meetings and are most frequently voiced around Primates’ Meetings — that those who are not familiar and confident with the parliamentary way the Church of England does its business are highly disadvantaged.

Dr Williams’s diary has been described by the media spokesman, the Archbishop of Australia, Dr Philip Aspinall, as ”horrendous” and the demands on him “enormous and constantly moving.” Praise and respect for the way he led the bishops’ retreat has been near-universal: one bishop described his reflections as “pure gold.” The bishops are said to have warmed to what he said and to have been drawn together into a more constructive frame of mind, acknowledging that there are deep and difficult issues to address but that they must engage with them.

Dr Aspinall said: “ The Archbishop put to us in the last retreat address on Saturday, that we must go into this conference confident that a way has been found to the Father through the Son via the cross and resurrection. We must be confident that that a way is there, and in this conference together we are seeking to discern where it is and to follow it.”

Everything has been put in place to allow the bishops to speak honestly and easily with each other, in a context of respect, said Dr Aspinall. It would not be for want of trying if they were unable or unwilling to do so. “It is a different way of working, and the bishops will have to be given updates each day to keep track of the flow of it. . . It’s not a debating chamber this time; it’s not a series of motions being presented or votes on set propositions. The chances of avoiding conflict when we get 600+ bishops together are pretty real, and the programme is designed to engage with the conflict in a way that is conducive and productive.” It is all to be “open and transparent processes rather than being put in a back room and voted on”.

Safeguarding the bishops’ integrity has been the first priority: there would, said Dr Aspinall, be “much to-ing and fro-ing , frank expression and robust debate”; but confidentiality in the indaba groups must be respected so that bishops did not feel either inhibited. “If anyone is going to move in their understanding or change their views, the last thing they need is for their view from the conference to be plastered all around the world, because they are then more inclined to need to stick to that view.”

The Archbishop of Cape Town, the Most Revd Thabo Makgoba, comes from Limpopo, home of indaba. A soft-spoken and gentle man with a powerful presence, he described indaba as “a method of engaging, learning, achieving” when there was a realisation of disharmony in a village. “We have acknowledged as a communion that there are concerns and issues around, that are bruising our communion and need more than rushing to quick solutions,” he said.

Mission to the world occupies this first week; interAnglican matters the final week, starting with the Bible and sexuality. Ian Douglas of the Design Group emphasised that there would be no attempt to “dodge the question of how we engage in questions of human sexuality”. And although the indaba groups do not discuss the Anglican Covenant and the continuing processes around the Windsor report until the final couple of days, there are to be opportunities for engagement throughout, in hearings and self-select sessions.

Dr Aspinall expressed himself as “greatly saddened” by the Archbishop of Sydney’s decision not to attend. He described the Evangelical tradition as “a vital and integral part of the life of the Anglican Communion. That will be weaker in this conference because they are not here, and we are all much the poorer for that. It means we will have to find other ways to engage the strength of that constituency.

“I’m sad. They had important things to say that the rest of us needed to hear — equally, I’m sad because I think other bishops have important things to say that they needed to hear. Engagement has been built in in smaller groups so it can be closer and more intensive engagement. Those things have been robbed by their not being here.”

SUNDAY: PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS

THE Archbishop of Canterbury called for a facing-up to the Communion’s difficulties when he addressed the bishops in an opening presidential address on Sunday afternoon.

“We must be honest about how deep some of the hurts and difficulties currently go; and we must refresh and reanimate our sense of what our Communion ought to be contributing to the whole ecumenical spectrum of Christian life,” he said. He went on to speak of a vision of Anglicanism whose diversity was “limited not by centralised control but by consent”.

The key words were “council” and “Covenant”, he suggested. Existing bonds of friendship and fellowship were “valuable channels of grace, even if some want to give such bonds more formal and demanding shape”.

Dr Williams warned: “If our efforts at finding coherence for our Communion don’t result in more transforming love for the needy, in greater awareness and compassion for those whose humanity is abused or denied, then this coherence is a hollow, self-serving thing, a matter of living ‘religiously’ rather than ‘biblically’.”

He reminded the Conference: “Our endings are in God’s hands; the Word, through the Spirit, is transforming us into Christlikeness, so that we may pray trustfully and intimately to our Father. And in that process our relations with each other are transformed, and even our relations with the material world around us. At our roots and at our end is the Word, Jesus our Lord, embodying all that God wants to do first for us and then through us.”